An edited version of Quentin Tarantino's latest revenge-murder fest, Django Unchained, was supposed to open in China today, but was yanked from all its theaters—in some cases, even after the opening credits had already started rolling.
They were an ill-advised concept to begin with, and now they are done for: the Weinstein Company ordered that the toy company responsible for making the controversial Django Unchained action figures stop making them immediately.
Welcome to the Box Office Report where we're talking about curious casting, the Olympics, and movies about aspiring marble champions.
Welcome to the Box Office Report where this should be known as the week before everyone sees and opines endlessly about Zero Dark Thirty.
Welcome to the Box Office Report where we're acknowledging that we have failed to stop Peter Jackson from taking over the world.
The Zero Dark Thirty torture debate broke out before you'd even seen it yet, right? Which led us to wonder, as everyone flocks to the theater over the holidays: Do tough conversations help or hurt at the box office? Do they make seeing a movie any more enjoyable? Or, in the case of Django Unchained, is immersion in controversy actually sort of the point?
Because nothing says Christmas more than tuberculosis, revolution, and singing, the movie musical Les Misérables took the Christmas Day box office with a surprisingly high Tuesday total.
Out of deference to the victims' families, and also in a likely effort to avoid controversy, movie studios and television networks have altered their schedules and amended their plans. Also: dictionaries.
A meandering, overindulgent tale of revenge that plays like an homage to a genre that never existed, Quentin Tarantino's latest feels more bound-up than any of his movies before it.
The Drudge Report's homepage went full troll today, displaying a photo of Quentin Tarantino alongside a headline that repeated the n-word seven times.
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Peter Jackson wants to make three Hobbit movies because he is a modern super-villain that should be stopped; Marvel gives away the plot of the new Captain America movie; Jamie Foxx and Zack Snyder are separately bad at their respective jobs.
Everyone is all aflutter about the Django Unchained trailer and the Hatfields & McCoys miniseries breaking cable ratings records, so maybe our current sociopolitical/economic climate has sparked something within us that wants to see hardscrabble tales of old America, when retribution and justice were simpler concepts, when you could spot a thief in plain sight, or settle any grievance with exacting certainty.
The Weinstein Company spent the day taking down leaked versions, but the wait is finally over: the trailer for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is officially, really, legally here.
Today: Meryl Streep is in a sexy new movie, Chloë Sevigny gets scary, and The Avengers is already a hit.
Plus: Kevin Costner passes on letting Quentin Tarantino rejuvenate his career
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